Burns is accused of masturbating and having oral sex with a 16-year-old boy and asking another boy to send him explicit pictures of himself, the indictment says. The former teacher is accused of having sexual contact with the teen in May of 2012, and is charged with reckless conduct because investigators say the man knew he was HIV positive.

A person engaging in intercourse or oral sex with someone while knowingly failing to disclose a positive HIV status is punishable by up to 10 years in prison under Georgia law.

Burns left the district before he was arrested and relocated to Columbus, Ga., Dougherty County schools spokesman R.D. Harter said.

Burns worked for the school district from July 2008 until September 2012 and was employed at Lamar Reese Magnet School, Harter said. He added that none of the victims were associated with the school where he worked.

In 2012, the school nominated Burns as a teacher of the year, Harter said.

“I’m proud of our police department for conducting the investigation and taking someone out of the classroom who shouldn’t have been there,” he said.

Burns is being represented by Willie C. Weaver — who also serves as a City of Albany Municipal Court judge, Dougherty County court clerk officials said Thursday afternoon.

Weaver didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment, and numbers listed for Burns were out of service.

ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here and for
following agreed-upon rules of civility. Posts and
comments do not reflect the views of this site. Posts and comments are
automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some
comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules,
click the "Flag as offensive" link below the comment.

Let's do some imagining. The man goes to trial in Dougherty County superior court, represented by City of Albany Municipal Court judge Willie Weaver. Now, if the jury finds the man guilty, those jurors had better mind their P’s and Q’s when they are in Albany. If a juror has to stand before Judge Weaver for a parking ticket or traffic violation, he will throw the book at the juror.

Why does the writing of this article leave me scratching my head from the onset wondering WHERE this took place? Which county? Which city or town? At the end of the story is mention of Dougherty County- shouldn't that have been more prominent to the introduction of this story? Who, what, where, why, how... and all that jazz.

When aids was first identified in this country we made on mistake. We allowed it to become political. Instead of treating it like the deadly, communicable disease it was we protected those with it and prohibited the medical community from stopping the spread of it. Those found to have aids could not be removed from the general public, unlike a person with an active TB case. Because we allowed gays to become a protected species, this disease has spread across the county to include everyone from drug addicts to innocent victims of rape. Now we have allowed a gay teacher to rape a young student and most likely spread this disease on further. When the gay community marches for “gay pride” think about just how proud this must make their parents.

Read the book "And the Band Played On". It is a great history of the aids epidemic and was written by a gay man. Then read Masters and Johnson's "Crises, Heterosexual Behavior in the Age of Aids" . Masters and Johnson took a lot of heat but what they said was pretty much true. They did a lot of research on sexual dysfunction. Not being politically correct they were marginalized in the press. It didn't seem to matter that they did a bunch of ground breaking sexual research and one of the area was those who were sexual irresponsible. One interesting fact was that 10% of the population were responsible for 90% of the sexually transmitted diseases. This teacher is one of the sexually irresponsible. Old classic public health investigation into AIDS would have helped prevent it's rapid spread once the disease was identified.